Afternoon of Tuesday, June 30, 2009 • Once it aimed to compete with YouTube, but that goal has backfired on bigger companies than Joost, which on Tuesday announced that it would be converting to a white-label video hosting service. Joost's CEO, Mike Volpi, is also stepping down in favor of Matt Zelesko, the current senior VP of engineering.

"We have built a solid technology platform that there is demand for in the marketplace, and look forward to this new chapter for our company," reads Volpi's blog post yesterday. "At the same time, we'll continue to operate Joost.com and its associated video applications. Unfortunately, as a part of this change, we will say goodbye to many of our colleagues and friends." Including himself, apparently.

Om Malik points out, though, that this wasn't just any video wannabe; Joost had hotshot founders, heaps of VC, deals with content providers like Viacom and CBS... and far, far too much hype for what it was able to deliver quickly. The company's new direction puts it in competition with the likes of Brightcove and Edgecast.

Now you can make money at home with Pirate Bay!

Morning of Wednesday, July 1, 2009 • You probably see it every morning at least five times in your inbox: a big batch of spam that tells you how you could be joining dozens of your fellow countrymen in making money at home shaking milk bottles or stuffing envelopes or making phone calls to foreign countries, and earning tens of thousands of dollars per minute in the process (offer void where ridiculous). But who would have thought that another such message would be as surprising as yesterday's news that a Swedish software company is purchasing The Pirate Bay.

The news came first exclusively from the BBC this morning: The company, Global Gaming Factory, apparently wants to create some kind of P2P business model where the people who help traffic a file are compensated for its distribution, presumably by parceling out portions of revenue from its eventual recipients.

"The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn't have a million people all grabbing a file and -- for the users who share that song -- a payment for putting that file on the P2P network," GGF CEO Hans Pandeya told the BBC.

Seems like there used to be a term for that. Some regal-sounding term. "Royal..." something.

Cisco Live keynote goes on despite glitches, protest

Morning of Tuesday, June 30, 2009 • Might Cisco develop a WebEx-oriented competitor to Microsoft Office? Senior VP Doug Dennerline dangled that (pick one based on your opinion of WebEx collaborations: tantalizing, distressing) prospect to attendees at the annual Cisco Live conference. Elsewhere, CEO John Chambers fended off protesters from SEIU 1877, furious over staff layoffs at the company.

IDGNS's Stephen Lawson caught Chambers' measured response: "You may not agree with everything I say, but the one thing you will find is that Cisco is proud of what we do in business, what we do in our customers, how we treat people -- whether it's our 13,000 vendors, our 4,600 contractors, or how we are (one of) the top 10 places to work in every part of the world," he said to the group. A tech glitch likewise failed to flap him.

Bands wanting Pandora play will need a toehold on Amazon

Beginning the middle of last month • Word is getting out about a change to Pandora's music-submission process for recording artists, and it's not a hit among those who choose to release only MP3s or to release their CDs through... well, anyone but Amazon. Artists must now have an actual CD available through Amazon Advantage and a UPC for that disc, in addition to the legal rights to their music and two MP3 tracks and so forth.

Digital Audio Insider flagged the change a couple of weeks ago, but word is just now getting out as artists run into the new rules. Formerly Pandora was famous for its all-comers policy -- if you could get their music to them, they'd try to give it a listen.

Reaction among musicians varied widely; Hypebot's lively discussion thread contained a lot of remarks along the "#pandoraFAIL" line; on the other hand, as Dan Rodriguez at metalinsider.net tartly noted, "Really, should you be clogging up someone's playlist with a song you recorded an hour ago and aren't ready to sell?"

This morning, Pandora's Tim Westergren told Hypebot that his company's decision isn't about taking a cut of the $29.95 -- moreover, "The commissions we get are a small part of the overall business (it's all about advertising)." Well, at least that's honest. This after 14% of Hypebot readers polled said that, after having learned of this deal, they would never use Pandora again.

RIAA smacks up Usenet.com, MCS Music smacks up everybody

June 30, 2009 • Sunrise, sunset, and nothing new under the sun for the mess that is music copyright law. In the district court for southern New York, the RIAA has won a tremendous victory over Usenet.com in a case that could set precedent elsewhere, as Judge Harold Baer denied Usenet.com's attempt at claiming safe harbor a la Sony v Betamax, since a subscription site such as theirs has an ongoing relationship with its customers and could in theory have some effect on how they use the service. CNet's Greg Sandoval has been out in front on this story so far.

Elsewhere, a number of music publishing companies are suing Microsoft, Yahoo, and RealNetworks for allegedly failing to get the correct licenses for the "underlying composition" on tracks available in their various online stores. Scribd has a viewable version of the 104-page filing, which you can scroll through to see if any of your favorite songs are involved with this one.

Meanwhile, Ben Sheffner at Copyrights and Campaigns has the latest on Sony v Tenenbaum (pre-trial maneuvering continues, judge's last good nerve clearly under siege); and Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who now says she won't agree to any settlement that requires her to pay money or admit guilt.